A Taste of Death (Maggie Olenski Series) (15 page)

"My editor! Yikes! What about?"

"I think she wanted to know how the book is coming. I told her where you were, and gave her
the number up there. Is that okay
?"

Okay
? That meant she'd probably be calling here soon, wanting a progress report. Maggie felt her stomach lurch as she thought of the looming deadline and the work she still
had to do. "Sure, Joe, that's fine
," she said, knowing he assumed she was spending every waking minute at her computer. How could she tell him she'd been getting behind on her book in order to investigate another murder?

Maggie ended the call
and returned the receiver to its cradle, her hand still resting on it. How quickly could she vacate the cabin, she wondered, and be out of reach of the dreaded editor's call? It seemed she had barely formed the thought when the phone rang, vibrating under her hand.

Maggie yipped, pulling her
hand away as if from a hot iron
and jumped back two feet. The phone rang again.

"Want me to get that?" Dyna asked, poking her head out of her room upstairs.

"No! Let it ring. Let the machine get it."

After the forth ring the machine clicked on, and after the beep Maggie heard that familiar voice calling from New York, friendly, but at the same time steely, the voice of someone Maggie suspected few tried to cross or contradict.

"Maggie, Anne Striker here. Just checking in on how the manuscript is shaping up. Call me at...." Maggie had tuned out by then, visions of ripping the phone cord out of the wall going through her head at the same time that she saw how infantile she was being. She couldn't avoid the woman forever. After all, they had paid Maggie an advance and deserved to check up on her once in a while. But not yet. No, not yet.

Dyna trotted dow
n the steps, a questioning look
on her face. Maggie glanced at her and slumped down into the sofa. "Don't ask," she said.

Dyna shrugged and dropped into the plump chair opposite her. "I still can't get over John being so rotten this morning over our trying to help. I mean, I thought he was a pretty neat guy. Today he acted like, like my father
,
for gosh sakes."

Maggie thought of the stern look on John's face at the coffee shop as he warned her to stay out of official business. It still made her nostrils flare. She had ne
ver taken kindly to orders, which
tended to make her want to do the opposite. This had certainly been the case last summer, after Joe found out what had happened at the resort and demanded she come home immediately from her ill fated vacation. It had only strengthened her resolve to stay.

John Severin wasn't her younger brother, of course. And his warning
carried
more weight. But unless he planned to arrest her and lock her up Maggie didn't see what he could actually do to stop her from investigating. She had presumed, naively it seemed, that she and John could work together somehow, cooperate, but clearly that wouldn't be the case. Now she could only hope to get inside information from Elizabeth's lawyer - with Elizabeth's approval, of course - and bypass the forbidding Sheriff Severin.

Her thoughts went back to her visit with Regina, and she real
ized she hadn't shared any of that
with Dyna yet. As her mind ran over it
,
she sat up with a start, remembering something.

Dyna looked up from the fingernail she had been examining. "What?" she asked.

"Something just occurred to me. Something bad."

Dyna's fingernail went to her teeth as she waited.

"If the vet finds that Ali was poisoned with oleander, the same poison that killed Jack, things might look even worse for Elizabeth."

"What do you mean?"

"Ali was outdoors, and probably ate whatever got to him this morning. Regina had been out walking early this morning when she said she saw Elizabeth out
,
too."

Dyna looked at her blankly, not getting it.

"Don't you see?" Maggie asked. "Elizabeth, who's been keeping out of sight in her own quarters, was outdoors early today, probably at the same time Ali was out. The same time Ali might have been sniffing and looking around, like the good alley cat he is, for something to eat."

"M
aggie!" Dyna protested, "Elizabeth would never poison a cat!" The look of horror on Dyna's face was so awful Maggie hurried to explain.

"I didn't mean she did, Dyna. Of course I know she wouldn't have poisoned Ali. I only meant that it could look suspicious to the wrong people."

"But she doesn't have the bottle of poison - if that's what it was - anymore. John carried it off after his search, remember?"

"I know. But the darn plant seems so available in this town. They should probably change the name from Cedar Hill to Oleander Ridge."

"Ha! You're right. There could be a bottle of oleander extract tucked away in every cupboard, for all we know. What's that old slogan - 'a chicken in every pot'? Maybe Cedar Hill's should be 'poison in every cupboard'."

"What I'd like to know," Maggie said, "is who put that particular bottle - and that book on poisons - in Elizabeth's cupboard."

"I asked Elizabeth who could have slipped them in there, and she has no idea. She says the Book Nook was so busy just before Christmas that anyone could have gone into her living area without her knowing. She says she's never worried about keeping her door locked, always trusted the people here."

Maggie nodded. "Annette's a possibility, of course. But since she seems to be the one who called John about seeing it, I think that takes her out
of the running
, don't you?"

"Yeah. Like we talked about before, if she was the murderer, she wouldn't want to put herself in the picture that way. Besides, I think Annette gets her kicks poking into what other people are doing, not by doing it herself."

"So who do we know of so far as a possible?" Maggie began ticking off her fingers. "There's Paul Dekens. He has a motive to kill Jack Warwick - to keep Big Bear - and probably the opportunity to hide the bottle in Elizabeth's cupboard."

"Oh, I really hope it's not him," Dyna said. "Count Leslie twice for an extra good motive for being marri
ed to a rat that cheated on her
and for having the poisonous plant growing in her own house. I don't know if she ever went to Elizabeth's book shop though. She doesn't seem like a reader, does she?"

"She could have bought books for someone else, if not for herself." Maggie touched a third finger. "Dan Morgan had oleander too, in the foyer of his restaurant, and his motive might be to preserve his business, which could go under if the ski resort was sold."

"Yeah, maybe," Dyna agreed, with less force than she had shown for Leslie. "And there's Regina, you know."

"Right." Maggie pressed a fourth finger. "She said herself
she had no use for Jack Warwick
and hated what he proposed to do to the town."

"What about Alexander and Karin?" Dyna asked.

"Well, Alexander wanted to sell Big Bear to Jack Warwick, so that probably lets him out. Karin, however, sided with Paul. She and Alexander don't seem to agree on very much, as far as I can see."

"Yeah. If Alexander was the one poisoned, everyone would sure be looking at Karin with suspicion. But you don't think she would have killed Jack, do you?"

"She doesn't seem like the type, but I don't think we can eliminate her just yet. She did have motive, and she was there at the refreshments table and certainly had the opportunity."

"I guess," Dyna agreed, somewhat reluctantly. "But let's prove it was Leslie
, okay
?"

Maggie laughed. "We'll try to prove it was whoever it was, and just hope it's not someone we've grown to like."

"I know," Dyna said, not echoing Maggie's laugh. "It would be a real bummer for that to happen, wouldn't it?"

Maggie looked at Dyna's face with a twinge of concern. Dyna had been the one urging her at the beginning to get involved in this murder investigation. And Maggie knew Dyna was as convinced as she of Elizabeth's innocence. But what if the murderer turned out to be someone who would be nearly as upsetting as Elizabeth? Things didn't always turn out the way you wanted them to, and Maggie wondered if Dyna would be able to handle it if it didn't. Would it be better to get Dyna away from all this? Maggie resolved to think about that very seriously.

<><><>

Concern about Dyna still lingered in Maggie's mind when she woke up the next morning. She had stayed up late, working on her book so that she would have the best possible report to give Anne Striker when she called the editor that day. She promised herself to do it as soon as the working day began at the publishing house in New York. With a little luck, she thought, Anne would be unavailable and Maggie would get away with leaving a message.

"Wow! It snowed last night!" Dyna's voice carried down the hall from her room. Maggie jumped out of bed and pulled her window curtain aside to be greeted by a vision in white. Several inches of snow had fallen while they slept, covering the cabin's once-cleared walkways and weighing down tree branches.

"It's beautiful!" Maggie cried, delighted with the dazzling whiteness softened only by blue-grey shadows of trees in the path of the sun.

"Beautiful, yeah," Dyna said from Maggie's doorway. "But they probably won't get around to plowing Hadley Road for quite a while, and we need to do some shopping."

"We do?"

"Tonight's the fund-raiser at Leslie's, remember? Do you have anything remotely wearable for a fancy dinner hanging in that closet?"

Maggie looked at the closet door, knowing the only things behind it were jeans, tops, and a fuzzy bathrobe. "Nope."

"Me neither. And we're going to have to figure out how to get to a dress shop or end up walking around that dinner looking like two pathetically dressed detectives trying to eavesdrop on everyone's conversation."

"Instead of looking like two well-dressed school fund supporters, trying to eavesdrop on everyone's conversation?"

"Exactly.

Maggie grabbed her robe and trotted down the steps to the living room. She stepped into her slippers, one at a time, as she hopped over to the sliding glass door that faced Hadley Road and their driveway. Looking out she saw that the snow covering it was definitely too high for either her Cavalier or Dyna's rental Ford to maneuver, coming up nearly to the car's bumper.

"Will it even be plowed in time to get to the dinner?" Maggie asked.

"Oh, sure. They'll clear it by then. They're much faster in Cedar Hill than in Baltimore because they get snow here all the time. But they have to do all the main roads first, you know. Hey, I've got an idea!"

Maggie looked at Dyna warily. "You're not going to suggest we turn the draperies into ball gowns, are you?"

"Huh? Oh!" Dyna grinne
d and made a face. "No, this is
Cedar Hill, not Tara. I was thinking of cross-country ski's! We've got all the equipment here. We can just ski through the woods over to Main Street."

"You make it sound so easy."

"It is," Dyna insisted.

"But I've never done cross-country."

"You'll pick it up like that," Dyna assured her, snapping her fingers.

"Let me think about it over a cup of coffee," Maggie said. She tightened the sash on her robe and headed for the kitchen. "That sounds like a very strenuous way of clothes shopping, too strenuous to even think about without a little fortification." And maybe I'll come up with a much better idea in the meantime, Maggie hoped, as she scooped coffee grounds into the filter.

<><><>

Unfortunately for Maggie, nothing better presented itself. Not long after calling Anne Striker and putting the best possible spin on how the book was progressing, Maggie found herself outside in the snow, braced for a morning of great exertion. She listened intently to Dyna's instructions as she stood in what seemed like very flimsy boots - compared to the downhill version she was used to - on much narrower skis, at the edge of the cabin's outside steps, which was the farthest she was willing to go at this point. Only the necessity of being inconspicuous at the fund raiser had pushed her to agree to this madness.

Dyna demonstrated the sliding-walking motions she would have to do, moving around the cabin's front yard with ease and tramping down tracks Maggie could use. Maggie tried it, feeling uncoordinated at first, but quickly found Dyna had been right. It was easy. At least here in the yard it was easy.

"You're getting it," Dyna said.

"I think I am," Maggie agreed –
and promptly pinned one ski under the other, lost her balance and fell down.

"You'll have to watch that," Dyna said as she helped Maggie right herself.

"I'll certainly try," Maggie said, brushing off her pants.

Dyna had told her to dress more lightly than she would for the downhill skiing. "You'll work up your own heat real soon," she had promised. As Maggie followed her down Hadley road and onto the trail in the woods, which snowmobilers had apparently already ridden through and packed down again, she soon found herself lowering the zipper on her jacket to let in cool air. Minutes later she begged Dyna to stop and let her catch her breath.